Stephen Dixon: All Gone

For a week after the funeral I go into my own special kind of mourning: seeing nobody, never leaving the apartment or answering phone calls, eating little and drinking too much, but mostly just sleeping or watching television while crying and lying in bed. Then I turn the television off, answer every phone call, run along the river for twice as many miles than I usually do, go out for a big restaurant dinner with a friend and return to my job.

The Saturday morning after the next Saturday after that I sit on the bench near the place on the subway platform where Eliot was thrown off. I stay there from eight to around one, on the lookout for the two young men. I figure they live in the neighborhood and maybe every Saturday have a job or something to go to downtown and after a few weeks they’ll think everything’s forgotten about them and their crime and they can go safely back to their old routines, like riding the subway to work at the station nearest their homes. The descriptions I have of them are the ones the elderly witness gave. He said he was a portrait painter or used to be and so he was absolutely exact about their height, age, looks, mannerisms and hair color and style and clothes. He also made detailed drawings of the men for the police, which I have copies of from the newspaper, and which so far haven’t done the police any good in finding them.

What I’m really looking out for besides those descriptions are two young men who will try and pick up or seriously annoy or molest a teenage girl on the platform or do that to any reasonably young woman, including me. If I see them and I’m sure it’s them I’ll summon a transit policeman to arrest them and if there’s none around then I’ll follow the young men, though discreetly, till I see a policeman. And if they try and molest or terrorize me on the bench and no policeman’s around, I’ll scream at the top of my lungs till someone comes and steps in, and hopefully a policeman. But I just want those two young men caught, that’s all, and am willing to risk myself a little for it, and though there’s probably not much chance of it happening, I still want to give it a good try.

I do this every Saturday morning for months. I see occasional violence on the platform, like a man slapping his woman friend in the face or a mother hitting her infant real hard, but nothing like two or even one man of any description close to those young men terrorizing or molesting a woman or girl or even trying to pick one up. I do see men, both old and young, and a few who look no more than nine years old or ten, leer at women plenty as if they’d like to pick them up or molest them. Some men, after staring at a woman from a distance, then walk near to her when the train comes just to follow her through the same door into the car. But that’s as far as it goes on the platform. Maybe when they both get in the car and especially when it’s crowded, something worse happens. I know that a few times a year when I ride the subway, a pull or poke from a man has happened to me.

A few times a man has come over to the bench and once even a woman who looked manly and tried to talk to me, but I brushed them off with silence or a remark. Then one morning a man walks over when I’m alone on the bench and nobody else is around. I’m not worried, since he has a nice face and is decently dressed and I’ve seen him before here waiting for the train and all it seems he wants now is to sit down. He’s a big man, so I move over a few inches to the far end of the bench to give him more room.

“No,” he says, “I don’t want to sit — I’m just curious. I’ve seen you in this exact place almost every Saturday for the last couple of months and never once saw you get on the train. Would it be too rude—”

“Yes.”

“All right. I won’t ask it. I’m sorry.”

“No, go on, ask it. What is it you want to know? Why I sit here? Well I’ve been here every Saturday for more than three months straight, if you’re so curious to know, and why you don’t see me get on the car is none of your business, okay?”

“Sure,” he says, not really offended or embarrassed. “I asked for and got it and should be satisfied. Excuse me,” and he walks away and stands near the edge of the platform, never turning around to me. When the local comes, he gets on it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been that sharp with him, but I don’t like to be spoken to by men I don’t know, especially in subways.

Next Saturday around the same time he comes downstairs again and stops by my bench.

“Hello,” he says.

I don’t say anything and look the other way. “Still none of my business why you sit here every Saturday like this?”

I continue to look the other way.

“I should take a hint, right?”

“Do you think that’s funny?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want me to do, call a policeman?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry and I’m being stupid.”

“Look, I wouldn’t call a policeman. You seem okay. You want to be friendly or so it seems. You’re curious besides, which is good. But to me it is solely my business and not yours why I sit here and don’t want to talk to you and so forth and I don’t know why you’d want to persist in it.”

“I understand,” and he walks away, stays with his back to me and gets on the train when it comes.

Next Saturday he walks down the stairs and stays near the platform edge about ten feet away reading a book. Then he turns to me and seems just about to say something and I don’t know what I’m going to say in return, if anything, because he does seem polite and nice and intelligent and I actually looked forward a little to seeing and speaking civilly to him, when the train comes. He waves to me and gets on it. I lift my hand to wave back but quickly put it down. Why start?

Next Saturday he runs down the stairs to catch the train that’s pulling in. He doesn’t even look at me this time, so in a rush is he to get on the car. He gets past the doors just before they close and has his back to me when the train leaves. He must be late for someplace.

The next Saturday he comes down the stairs and walks over to me with two containers of coffee or tea while the train’s pulling in. He keeps walking to me while the train doors open, close, and the train goes. I look at the advertisement clock. He’s about fifteen minutes earlier than usual.

“How do you like your coffee if I can ask, black or regular? Or maybe you don’t want any from me, if you do drink coffee, which would of course be all right too.”

“Regular, but I don’t want any, thanks.”

“Come on, take it, it’s not toxic and I can drink my coffee any old way. And it’ll perk you up, not that you need perking up and certainly not from me,” and he gives me a container. “Sugar?” and I say “Really, this is—” and he says “Come on: sugar?” and I nod and he pulls out of his jacket pocket a couple of sugar packets and a stirring stick. “I just took these on the way out of the shop without waiting for a bag, don’t ask me why. The stick’s probably a bit dirty, do you mind?” and I shake my head and wipe the stick though there’s nothing on it. “Mind if I sit and have my coffee also?” and I say “Go ahead. It’s not my bench and all that and I’d be afraid to think what you’d pull out of your pocket if I said no — probably your own bench and cocktail table,” and he says “Don’t be silly,” and sits.

He starts talking about the bench, how the same oak one has been here for at least thirty years because that’s how long he’s lived in the neighborhood, then about the coffee, that it’s good though always from the shop upstairs a little bitter, then why he happens to see me every Saturday: that he’s recently divorced and has a child by that marriage who he goes to in Brooklyn once a week to spend the whole day with. He seems even nicer and more intelligent than I thought and comfortable to be with and for the first time I think he’s maybe even good-looking when before I thought his ears stuck out too far and he had too thin a mouth and small a nose. He dresses well anyway and has a nice profile and his hair’s stylish and neat and his face shaven clean which I like and no excessive jewelry or neck chain which I don’t and in his other jacket pocket are a paperback and small ribbon-wrapped package, the last I guess a present for his little girl.